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African Americans in the
The Emergency Conservation Work Act establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps was signed into law by President Roosevelt on March 31, 1933. Under the direction of Robert Fechner, the CCC employed young men between the ages of 17 and 23 in work camps where they were assigned to various conservation projects. Enrollees were paid thirty dollars a month, twenty-five dollars of which was sent home to the enrollee's families. From 1933 to 1942, over three million young men enrolled in the CCC, including 250,000 African Americans who were enrolled in nearly 150 all-black CCC companies. As with all Civilian Conservation Corps members, black CCC enrollees contributed to the protection, conservation and development of the country's environmental resources. Enrollees planted trees, fought fires, and took part in pest eradication projects. They built and improved park and recreation areas, constructed roads, built lookout towers, and strung telephone and electric wires. Money sent home by CCC enrollees assisted families hard-hit by the depression. CCC camps provided enrollees with educational, recreational and job training opportunities. African American CCC members performed their duties in a society divided by race, and often in the presence of officially sanctioned racism. Black membership in the CCC was set at ten percent of the overall membership—roughly proportional to the percentage of African Americans in the national population. However, because the economic conditions of blacks were disproportionately worse than those of whites, this race-based quota system did not adequately address the relief needs of African American youth. When the CCC began, few efforts were made to actively recruit African Americans. Many states, particularly in the South, passed over qualified black applicants to enroll whites. Black CCC enrollees routinely faced hostile local communities, endured the racist attitudes of individual CCC, Army and Forest Service supervisors, and found limited opportunities for assuming leadership positions within the CCC's administrative structure. This inhospitable environment was aided by the absence of a sustained commitment on the part of the Roosevelt Administration to end racist practices within the CCC. In the early years of the CCC some camps were integrated, but prompted by local complaints and the views of the US Army and CCC administrators, integrated CCC camps were disbanded in July, 1935, when CCC Director Robert Fechner issued a directive ordering the "complete segregation of colored and white enrollees." While the law establishing the CCC contained a clause outlawing discrimination based upon race; the CCC held that "segregation is not discrimination" (see Fechner's letter to NAACP leader Thomas Griffith). Although the CCC's Jim Crow policy prompted complaints from black and white civil rights activists, segregation remained the rule throughout the life of the CCC. The following documents, selected by Michael Hoak, a doctoral candidate in American History at William and Mary College, give some sense of the issues confronting black CCC enrollees, as well as the conflict over segregation among members of the Roosevelt administration. Mr. Hoak is currently writing his dissertation on this topic. For a recent work focusing on the history and experiences of blacks in the California CCC camps see Olen Cole Jr.'s African Americans in the Civilian Conservation Corps (University Press of Florida, 1999). —Project Director, New Deal Network
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